


you can see it with the lights out

by fleetofships



Series: over the counter [2]
Category: One Direction (Band)
Genre: AU, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, F/M, Fluff, Fluff and Mush, student photographer extraordinaire Harry Styles
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-01-06
Updated: 2015-01-06
Packaged: 2018-03-06 10:15:07
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,112
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3130817
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/fleetofships/pseuds/fleetofships
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <i>I think I’m in love with Maggie, but I don’t know how to tell her yet.</i>
</p><p>
A little drabble set after the events of <a href="http://archiveofourown.org/works/2119272">over the counter</a>.</p>
            </blockquote>





	you can see it with the lights out

_You can hear it in the silence, silence_  
 _You can feel it on the way home, way home_  
 _You can see it with the lights out, lights out_

+++

There’s this girl with paint on the hem of a worn hoodie, and sometimes I see her with ink-stained fingers. 

She smiles. It’s not a smile that demands your attention, but it’s one that lingers in your thoughts a long time after seeing it. Like, seeing the ghosts of fairy lights on a Christmas tree after shutting your eyelids.

I live for those smiles.

Sorry, is this making sense? There’s this girl, is all.

I think I’m in love with Maggie, but I don’t know how to tell her yet.

+++

It’s been three months. Three months last week, actually, marked on the day Maggie came by the bakery to tell me we were a real thing. That we had been for three months. Even though she knew I knew. I knew she knew I knew.  

But, she told me anyway, and it was cute. Ed rolled his eyes so hard, I thought they might go back into his head.

I snogged her so thoroughly after my shift until we both felt dizzy. I’m always in her flat, with its rickety futon and this Ikea quilt that doesn’t really match the rest of her room and the smell of oil paint. It feels like home. I’m there more than my own dorm.

She makes me feel like that all the time, you know. Like home. And slightly dizzy.

I almost told her then, as she looked up at me from the futon, all dazed and flushed. 

“What?” she asked, incredulous, as I paused. I touched a fingertip to the join of her neck and shoulder. 

“Nuffin’, babe.” I rested my head in the crook of her neck, and inhaled. “You’re just quite pretty.”

She laughed, and squished up her face in this adorable nose-crinkling way that made me want to buy her a thousand daisies. “No, you. Actually, I reckon you might be prettier, Styles.” She brushed her fingers through the hair at the nape of my neck. 

I shrugged, and pressed my lips to her pulse. “Way to challenge my masculinity, Mags.”

She sighed, small and happy. It didn’t seem right to tell her at that second. It needed to be perfect. 

She deserves perfect. 

+++

I’m sitting cross-legged in the middle of this big white room, staring at a blank wall. It’s around 8PM. Don’t worry, I haven’t gone starkers. Well, not quite.

I’m in the middle of the student gallery, trying not to have a panic attack about the show next week. Everyone thinks I’m this laid back lad, but I’m prone to fits of anxiety when it comes to my work. 

I haven’t mounted and framed everything yet, and I don’t know what should go where, and just, sod. The wall is so big. And blank. 

I know I’m good at this photography thing. Sometimes I’m great.  Right now, though, I’m just really, really overwhelmed. 

I thumb out a text to Maggie, taking a deep breath: _Why can’t I just work in a bakery forever? Why did I decide that I was a photographer?_

Stare at the wall some more, hands steepled under my chin. 

My mobile lights up, buzzes. _Because you’re bloody good at it. You okay, Styles?_

I reply with an honest _no._

She replies with a _Haz, your show is going to be fucking great._

A few minutes pass, and I still have no idea what I’m doing. 

I pick up my mobile again, resigned, _Can I come over?  I’m just having a bit of a panic attack. Auuugh._

_\-- Sure. I’m just watching shite on the telly and painting._

_\-- Be there in 15._

\-- _:) Door’s open._

I get up and turn off the light, which clicks with an eerie echo through the studio, and try to calm my breathing. I just have to make it the fifteen minutes to Mags’ flat before I really do go starkers.

+++

Her door’s propped open with a shoe, and the sound of television laughter fills the flat. I find her laying down on her carpet next to her scuffed coffee table, a cup of tea balanced on her chest, and flecks of paint on her fingers. 

“Hi,” Maggie greets, waving a hand from the floor. “There’s water in the kettle if you want some tea.”

I wave back, and drop my bag in its regular spot next to the door. There’s a familiar mug on the kitchen counter; it’s a Disneyland Paris mug that Maggie brought from home, slightly chipped and years old. I’ve commandeered it after we started dating, and it’s kind of my favorite thing.

Well, Maggie anything is kind of my favorite thing.

I take three minutes to make myself a proper cuppa, and I hear Maggie giggle at Alexander Armstrong. 

“You’re an odd duck, Maggie Evans.” I hover over her, and take a step so that her legs are in between my feet. She’s pretty lying there, hair haloed out underneath her.  “Is _Pointless_ any better of a quiz show from down there, love?” 

“ _Pointless_ is everything, regardless of station, Hazza,” she supplies, not moving from her spot on the flecked rug. “You’re more than welcome to join me down here. It’s cozy. I have dust bunny friends. We have taken over the carpet.” 

I laugh, and carefully lower myself down. I straddle her legs, knees at her hips, tea in hand. Maggie meets my eyes with a smile, and I take a sip of tea. 

Maggie grabs the remote and turns off the telly. She places her oversized, forest green mug on the coffee table, and props herself on her elbows.  “The group show is driving you more mental than I’ve ever seen you, Harry.” 

“It shouldn’t be, though. It’s just me and Zayn and Perrie in this show… but it’s a lot. I know I’ll get it all done in time, but right now… I’m freaking out. I have so much to do.” I do. I have a lot to do, and bothering my girlfriend, even though she’s on the floor just watching quiz shows, should probably be low on the list of priorities. 

Another sip of tea, and then she reaches out to rub soft circles into my stomach, which makes me almost purr. I place my mug next to hers, then bend down to press my lips to her forehead, then trail my lips down to her soft mouth. She hums approvingly into my lips, and then we snog for a few minutes on that carpet.

It’s nice.

“I know what will make you feel better,” Maggie offers, in between kissing my neck and my collarbone.

I immediately know what she’s talking about, and I pull back and raise my eyebrows suggestively. She sort of rolls her eyes at this, and snorts. “Should I get the Sharpies, then?”

“Yeah. Meet me at the bed, Styles,” she nods, and I pull her up from the rug. 

She just gets me.

+++

I’m floating, weightless, drifting. Maggie’s whispering voice in my ear brings me back from faraway.  “You fell asleep.”

“Mmm, I always do,” I reply into the pillow. The smell of permanent marker is in the air, and Blur’s playing over her laptop speakers. “S’the most relaxing thing we do. Besides the sex, I guess.”

She huffs out a small laugh, and I hear her uncap another marker. She’s straddling my shirtless back, and she taps the marker against my shoulder. There’s a minute of contemplative silence. “What to draw…”

I turn my head to the side, and let out a deep breath. “What have you drawn already?”

“Some sort of pegacorn, and a pint of beer.”

“You could draw a croissant,” I muse. Croissants are kind of our little inside joke, now. Niall’s even named our pub quiz team The Croissants, and Maggie hates us. 

“Ha ha, Harry. You’re being quite cheeky to someone who could just draw a massive penis on you with a banner that says, ‘I’m a dickhead’.” 

I shrug the best I can underneath her and yawn a little. “It’s on my back, anyway, love.”

“I’ll draw it on your damn forehead.” She plants a tiny kiss on my cheek. “Now sit still. I’ve got it.” 

My back’s a blank canvas that I haven’t marked up with tattoos yet.  She spends the next four or five minutes quietly drawing there. The soft felt-scratch of the marker is a whisper on my skin.  I don’t even know how we started into Maggie doodling on me, but there were markers on her bedstand one night, and we were both drunk after a night out with Niall and Louis.

And now it’s just become a thing, I guess.

Her lips press against the nape of my neck. “All done,” she murmurs into my hair. I only half hear her, because I’m already lulled to slumber into the soft pillow.

+++

I wake up a few hours later to her ink stained fingers splayed across my collarbone, and her breath washing over my shoulders. There’s also this pressing need to piss.  I carefully slide off the bed to not disturb Maggie and pad quietly into her small toilet. 

It’s not dark in Maggie’s room; she’s got these fairy lights she has on all the time. It sounds terribly cliché, like, uni girl in a one bedroom flat, she’s got to have Christmas lights. But I like them.

The light of the bathroom hurts, though, and I groan a little. 

Washing my hands after, I shake them over the sink basin, and wipe them on my pants. As I turn to shut off the light, something inky in black and navy in the mirror catches in the corner of my eye. I rub the sleep out of my eyes, and crane my neck to look behind me into the mirror.

Between my shoulder blades, densely crowded above a hilariously cartoonish drawing of a pegacorn mid-flight, is a sketched banner held aloft by what look like cherubs.

And it takes me a second to figure out what’s written inside the unfurling banner in a gothic font. It’s backwards, and…

Oh. _Oh._

“UOY EVOL I” it says in the mirror. 

She probably didn’t think I’d see it during a shower. Or maybe she did? I don’t know. I’m not freaking out. Okay, a little. 

Maybe she’s taking the piss? I read it again, just to make sure, and scrub my eyes with the heels of my palms. 

I turn off the light. I breathe in. Okay.

It’s the most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen, and I’m not scared all of a sudden.

+++

I practically make a running jump onto Maggie’s bed, and I hear her groan awake, but before she can react, I’ve straddled the lump of her between my knees. Seriously, _fuck it._ I’m on cloud nine.

“What the bloody _hell,_ Styles?”

I pull the covers off of her face, and cup her cheeks in my hands. I bounce a little with my knees. “Maggie-aggie-aggie-aggie. You’re perfect. Want to know why?”

“You are such a _nutter._ ” She yawns, and her face squishes up in a look of confusion. “But why?”

“You thought I wouldn’t _see,_ but I did,” I singsong and gesture towards my back with my thumb. Her eyes open wide in realization, and her face flushes. “D’ya really mean it? What you drew.”

She’s silent for a few seconds. “Yes.” Her mouth drags into one of those smiles.

I’m inches away from her mouth and I know I can say it. 

“I love you, too, Maggie.” I whisper it like a prayer or a wish or a hope. “I’ve known for a while now.” 

“Same.” 

“Same?!” I pretend to sound exasperated. “You can draw it, but can you not-” 

She reaches up and covers my mouth.  “I love you, Harry. I really do.  Since that damn moment you followed me home and I made you tea. Probably before that, actually. I don’t know. It doesn’t matter.”

My heart is somewhere else. The moon, probably. And then she’s kissing me with those lips and laughing against me. Right there under the twinkling lights on a Wednesday night in her bed, our mouths tasting of sleep, it’s _everything._ She touches me like it’s everything.

And I know I have this huge group show I should think about that and call Zayn and work at the bakery tomorrow and… But it all doesn’t matter right now. I’m in love with Maggie, and I really can't believe she told me first. It's perfect.

She deserves perfect.

+++

_You are in love, true love_

**Author's Note:**

> Title taken from "You Are In Love" by Taylor Swift.
> 
> A big thank you to [Loose](http://archiveofourown.org/users/becomingshades/pseuds/becomingshades) for the beta and edit. Much love to Hanna and Clo for the support.


End file.
